Penn State is bowl eligible for the second season in row in what would have been year three of the NCAA sanction that levied a four-year postseason ban on the program.
After an 0-2 start on the road, Penn State traveled to Baltimore for a neutral site game with Maryland at M&T Bank Stadium and held on for a 31-30 win over one of many former employers of head coach James Franklin.
At 6-2, Franklin and the Lions clinch bowl eligibility three weeks earlier than last season, when a 30-13 toppling of Temple on Nov. 15 sent the Nittany Lions to the Pinstripe Bowl where they’d eventually top Boston College, courtesy of 371 passing yards and four touchdowns from Christian Hackenberg.
That 31-30 win over Boston College was the first Penn State bowl win since since the 19-17 win against LSU on 2010 New Years day in the Capital One Bowl.
But what bowl will Penn State partake in this winter? With five weeks of football left, it’s still early to be be sure, but one projection currently slates another homecoming for Franklin.
CBS Sports bowl expert Jerry Palm currently has Penn State slated for a Dec. 30 6 p.m. showdown against Mississippi State at the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tennessee.
A bowl game in Nashville would see Franklin revisiting more familiar territory as he spent three seasons as head coach of Vanderbilt University, located just five miles from the bowl game site, prior to taking his current job at Penn State.
In 2012, Franklin led No. 23 Vanderbilt to a 38-24 win over North Carolina State in the Music City Bowl, his first of back-to-back bowl wins at “the other school,” as he prefers to say.
Last season, Notre Dame edged LSU 31-28 with a 32-yard field goal as time expired. Tigers running back Leonard Fournette had a monster game in a losing effort, racking up 143 rushing yards and a score plus a 100-yards kickoff return for another score.
Penn State has played in 45 bowl games in the its 128 seasons, tied for ninth most in the nation, while winning 28 of them, tied for third in the nation.
Other bowl projections from ESPN.com has Penn State playing Georgia in the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1 at noon, per ESPN senior writer Mark Schlabach; meanwhile college football reporter Brett McMurphy has a late Dec. 30 matchup against USC at the National University Holiday Bowl in San Diego, California., with a 10:30 p.m. ET kickoff.
